The South Korean Navy recovered the body of a seaman early on Monday after he went missing from a patrol vessel near the maritime border with North Korea.

According to a navy statement, the body was found about 52 km east of South Korea’s coast during a search and rescue operation. The patrol vessel had been operating off the country’s eastern coast when the seaman disappeared.

The navy did not disclose the circumstances surrounding the disappearance.

South Korea had asked North Korea to assist with the search and return the seaman if he had drifted across the Northern Limit Line.

The militaries of the two Koreas remain in a tense standoff along the sea and land border drawn up after the 1950-53 Korean War.

In 2020, a South Korean fisheries ministry official who went missing from a patrol vessel off the west coast drifted across the maritime border and was shot dead by North Korean soldiers. North Korea later issued an apology over the incident.

Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated sharply in recent years, while North Korea has cut all communication lines with South Korea.